Nikola Tesla, inventor and engineer, lived at The New Yorker Hotel in rooms 3327 and 3328 from 1933-1943. Although Tesla had enormous contributions to several fields (electronics, radio, wireless communications and more), he had never attempted to exploit his research for financial gain.

After Tesla died in his hotel room on January 7, 1943, the safe in room 3327 with his papers on "Tesla's Death Ray" (a theoretical weaponized form of his research) was broken into and the research papers stolen. They have never been recovered.